At the end of 2009, seven organizations and four individuals filed for judicial review on Law No.1/PNPS/1965 for reason that the Law is considered to have caused problems in the Indonesian interfaith relationship. Since then, the debates over the review have emerged in the public domain.
Dr. Edy Hiariej, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) criminal law expert, was quoted as saying that this legislation is still needed to protect the religious life in an effort to maintain public order. "However, its implementation needs to be carried out carefully to prevent from trials of thoughts, opinions as well as one’s beliefs," he said on Monday (19/4) in Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM.
He added that in the future the Religion Desecration Law needs to be improved. "This Law needs to be revised, especially in Article 1 because it does not meet the provisions of the lex certa, in which the legal provisions in this Article are not firm and not clear, which may lead to multiple interpretations," he said.
Dr. Abdul Gaffar Karim, S.I.P, MA, Director of UGM Center for Politics and Government Studies, in public discussion "Critical Review of the Law No. 1/ PNPS/1965," said that if this Law is maintained by the Constitutional Court, a clearer arrangement is needed to avoid desecration/defamation of religions. "In practice, there is no separation between this Law and the desecration itself. This Law is not able to identify actions that can be criminalized by mere differences in interpretation," he explained.
Separately, A.A.G.N. Ari Dwipayana, S.I.P, M.Si, lecturer of Government Department UGM said that religion desecration laws should be revoked. However, further regulation is needed to define what blasphemy and desecration of religions are. "Later, there should be clearer details in those regulations to be made about what desecration is and what blasphemy is, so the Law will not provoke further negative interpretations," he explained.